Professor Ming H. Chen’s research examines how immigration policy, race, and administrative law shape identity and inclusion in the United States and beyond.
The UC Law San Francisco Foundation Board of Trustees has selected Professor Ming H. Chen as the winner of this year’s Foundation Faculty Award recognizing scholarly productivity, excellence, and promise.
“Professor Chen’s research leverages theory, history, and empirics to analyze inequality, with recent writing on the regulation of high-skilled workers, international students, and naturalized immigrants in the U.S. and Canada,” said Foundation Board of Trustees President and Emeritus Chancellor & Dean Leo Martinez. “She deftly uses a variety of communication platforms to convey her ideas and amplify their impact. She also follows the tradition of excellence that has characterized UC Law SF throughout its history.”
Chen is the Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair and founding faculty director of the Center on Race, Immigration, Citizenship & Equality. She joined UC Law SF first as a visiting professor in 2021-2022 and then as a tenured faculty member starting July 1, 2022, following ten years at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Chen brings an interdisciplinary perspective to her scholarship and teaching on race, immigration, and the administrative state. She is the author of Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era (Stanford University Press 2020), which was the subject of a Colorado Law symposium in 2021 and a TEDx Talk in 2020. She serves as co-editor for the Immigration Prof blog and previously served on the executive committees for the AALS Immigration Section and the Law and Society Association’s Citizenship and Migration Section.
In 2023, Chen was one of 20 distinguished experts chosen to be a Public Voices Fellow. That recognition gave her a platform to share her insights on race and immigration with a broad readership in The Boston Globe, The Guardian, NPR, The Progressive, and The Washington Post, among others. She also regularly consults on policy with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Asian American community groups.
“These experiences exemplify Professor Chen’s versatility and effectiveness as a public intellectual who can reach beyond the legal academy to shape public discourse,” said Provost & Academic Dean Morris Ratner.
Her scholarship has been reviewed positively in law reviews (here and here), social science journals, and academic blogs, demonstrating the breadth and depth of engagement with her impactful scholarship. Read more about her scholarship here.
The committee that nominated Chen as this year’s Foundation Award winner includes Ratner, Associate Dean for Research Dave Owen, Distinguished Professor Reuel Schiller, and last year’s Foundation Award winners Professors Thalia González and Manoj Viswanathan.
